Garb

I'll cheerfully admit it - I am not a garb fanatic. I tend to spend most of my time doing other things, which explains why I've had virtually two chemises and two basic outfits for the past 15 years. (I figure that suits a Borderer in any case...)

I'm hoping to slowly improve my costuming, but it's not high priority. In the meantime, here are the garb items which I have put some considered work into.

Flat Cap

I made my formal flat cap based on a fairly standard design of this type of headware, with the intention of using some of a large number of silver rose studs I had found at a local craft shop.

So it was a real delight to come across a picture of a woman in my exact period wearing something almost exactly like my flat cap. It was described as "a small velvet cap decorated with feathers and jewelled roses" in the painting of an unknown girl c 1569, attributed to the Master of the Countess of Warwick (Plate III in The Visual History of Costume by Aileen Ribeiro and Valerie Cumming; Ratsford 1989).

My rose studs weren't jewelled in the centre, but otherwise are very similar to those in the portrait. I'd used green velvet, rather than red, as all my garb is green (a colour I don't normally wear mundanely and which I make a point of using in my garb as a point of difference).

The hat is covered in trios of small beads, which are based on the beadwork on the bodice of Mary Queen of Scots, as depicted in the 1560-61 painting of her, credited to the School of Jean Clouet (Ribeiro; Fig 43, pg 84).

I spent a lot of time wondering how women kept such hats securely on their heads. I'm a little wary of pins, as I've never been able to secure them effectively enough to be able to brave a nor-wester and be assured of my headgear remaining in place.

So (garb mavins click away now), I've attached two transparent domes to the underside of the hat which lets me click it in place on top of the jewelled coif I wear with it. Looks perfect, stays put.

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Sleeve Insert

Embroidered sleeve inserts, which ran in a band from wrist to shoulder, were a common element in women's garb in Lowland Scotland. I'm not sure why, but I'll cheerfully speculate that it makes it easy to fancy up a plain sleeve and swap them over to a new set when you need to. Typically the sleeves were left open along the back seam to permit the leine-style chemise to drop through, though I think this was predominantly earlier than my period and I chose to close the seam as these sleeves were designed for winter wear.

The sleeve design was based on a red woollen hanging of the late sixteenth century (Howard, Fig 98, pg 89). It has vertical black velvet stripes, one of which has leaves and berries with symmetrical decorations of leaves and fruit applied in black velvet. Couched yellow cord stems and tendrils and French knots are used.

Howard adapted a design from the hanging, and I adapted the design from Howard. I substituted rose studs and beads for the berries of the original (one of these days I'll learn how to make French knots behave), and used whipped chain stitch for the main stem with blackwork in the leaves. This approach made it surprisingly easy to complete -- the actual thinking associated with the design work took several months, the needlework itself only a couple of nights. The rose studs are very similar to ones used in period, as seen in a painting in The Visual History of Costume (Ribeiro and Cumming).

Update: I've now seen and identified the red wool hanging as a wall covering used in Berkeley Castle. The "hanging" actually covers all the walls in the Grand Staircase area, a rather large stairway and vestibule area connecting a number of rooms in the castle. The castle information notes that the Grand Staircase features "fine portraits and Tudor embroidery on locally made woollen cloth covering the walls."

It wasn't until I started sketching the embroidery on the wall that I recognised the design as "my sleeves". According to the guide taking the tour group through the area, the hangings are part of tentage brought back from the Field of the Cloth of Gold, where Henry VIII of England met with Francis I of France in 1520. According to Denise Taylor of the Sealed Knot, are late 16th-century, with a stencilled and hand-sewn design on red material which had formed part of bed hangings given by Henry VIII; she says that the material, which looks like wool, is said to be the same as that used for soldiers' jackets.

Unfortunately Berkeley Castle has a no-photography policy, so I was unable to get any close-up shots of the embroidery . The Website and guide book has a small general shot of the area but you can't see anything of the embroidery.

References
Howard, Constance; Design for Embroidery from Traditional English Sources; Ratsford 1989
Ribeiro, Aileen and Cumming, Valerie; The Visual History of Costume; Ratsford 1989; Unknown Girl c 1569, attributed to Master of the Countess of Warwick (Plate III)

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Belt and Rosary

My "fancy" belt makes a nice change from the all-purpose utility belt. It also has a lot of references to my persona.

Suns in splendour from a set of Christmas ornaments; ceramic white roses from a pack of bridal notions; both emblems of the House of York. The pouch depending from the belt is of green velvet, with a small metal scallop shell (so I've obviously been on pilgramage, just haven't figured out where to!) and another sun in splendour at the base, where ornaments and beads tended to be placed.

Of smal coral aboute hire arm she bar
A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene.
Chaucer, The Prioress' Tale

The pouch actually holds a rosary which I made from roses. As a recusant Catholic, katherine naturally carries one of these, though not openly in these perilous times.

According to Thurston, many names were applied to prayer beads, such as devotiones, signacula, oracula, precaria, patriloquium, serta, preculae, numeralia, computum and calculi. The Old English form - bedes, or bedys - was a synonym for prayers. By the beginning of the 16th century, "Paternoster beads" became "Ave beads" reflecting the change in the preferred prayer from the Paternoster to the Ave Maria; other names were rosary, chaplet, or crown.

Rosaries and chaplets are just one of the numerous memory devices used for keeping track of prayer cycles from the 12th century onwards. Typically, rosaries consist of a number of 10-bead sections called decades, with various decorative elements such as larger beads, medals or badges, known as "gauds" or, later, "Paternosters", for the prayer said when reaching this point in the cycle. They have been made from a huge variety of materials, such as knotted rope, finely wrought silverwork, wooden lozenges and, in this case, rose petals. Five-decade rosaries become standard for the laity in 1569, following codifcation by Pope Pius V, but there have been many variations in the numbers of decades used.

The chaplet is shorter, sometimes a simple strand on cord or thread for hanging over belts; others were loops worn as bracelets, necklaces (though this practice was banned for nuns in the 15th century) or even as baldrics (Thurston). By the 16th century, the "tenner", or one-decade chaplet, had become popular. These ended with two or more Paternosters as well as an ornamental knot, tassel or special medal, and were popular with men and monks (Rosaries Guild).

I've made lots of rose mash beads and flattened rose tokens over the years (though I have recently seen that this substance hasn't been documented later than the 1920s for rosary use). A string made a decade ago still has a great scent. My preference, when making rosaries, is to make a look-alike, with only nine rather than 10 beads for the decades. I'm uncomfortable making such a religiously significant object without the intention of using it for prayer. I've also made chaplets, the shorter version, using just nine beads (though I've since found that nine-bead chaplets are also in use for prayer, but this seems to be a post-period practice as a great many non-traditional forms have been developed over the past century).

To Make a Rose Mash Rosary

My rosary's beads consist of finely chopped rose petals mixed with a little rosewater. The mash is slowly simmered in an iron pot for a number of hours until it can be rolled together and hold their form. (If they are too dry, they fall apart, in which case more rosewater can be added; if they are too wet to form a solid shape, then they can be simmered longer to reduce the liquid content). If simmered in a non-iron pot, the beads will turn a tea-brown; using an iron pot or adding a handful of iron nails or old bolts to the mix aids the oxidation process to produce the traditional black coloration.

When forming the beads, oiled palms help to stop the bead mash from sticking. They can be formed into beads for rosaries or chaplets, or pressed into flat disks for tokens. Keeping the size of beads to no larger than a pea, and tokens to no larger than a 20-cent piece, represents the maximum size before the material fails on drying. Beads should be left for a few hours to dry slightly and then strung (trying to find a thin hole in a black bead can be a trial later). Beads should dry to a solid hardness within 3-4 days. It is supposed to be possible to sand them to make them regular and shiny, but I prefer the rougher look my ones have and have yet to experiment with making them look more like plastic!

My rosary uses pearls as gauds and, as with period examples, has a small bottle which could hold perfume or holy water. The next plan is to make a rosary which matches the one used by Mary Queen of Scots, with crystal beads and gold gauds. Another version has pomander beads - filigree enamelled goldwork. These sorts of beads were often filled with musk, cloves and myrrh, in the hope that the scents - if not the prayers! - would protect the wearer from plague.

I'd like to make a rosary out of orange peel, as made by Father Gerard when he was held in the Tower of London in 1597 (Gerard, pg 117). He bribed the guards to supply oranges as he could use the juice to write secret messages (orange juice has a security advantage over lemon juice -- once revealed, it stays revealed, and you can tell if your message has been read). It's not clear how he used the peel to form the rosary, though he does mention sewing crosses of orange peel together. I have corresponded with a group of retired nuns who are devoted to producing rosaries, and they are trying to find if there are any records in their archives regarding this. Further research is required…

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